Composite work cycles (CWC) are important aspects of product development and validation processes for many equipment manufacturers. CWCs may be defined as a carefully selected set of defined test events intended to map to a desired percentile in a severity response distribution. Unfortunately, the variability in equipment application and severity in the user base may be high and poorly understood. Accordingly, a defined composite work cycle may not closely map to desired severity percentiles. For example, a composite work cycle may suffer from unnecessary redundancy in event definition, or may be lacking a specified event to be input in order to accurately map to the desired percentile of severity.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,571,814 to Zhao discloses a structural load monitoring system incorporating a load monitoring reliability factor. According to one embodiment, Zhao provides a method including accessing distributions of flight loads associated with one or more flight regimes for a fleet of aircraft. Using the distributions of flight loads, a factor for a flight regime is determined that provides a flight load adjustment for a component on each aircraft of a fleet of aircraft known to be affected through load damage by the flight regime. Such structural health predictions are used to determine when to replace various aircraft components. However, Zhao does not relate to using a D-optimal selection process to provide improved severity estimates.
Accordingly, it is advantageous to provide improved severity testing using a D-optimal selection process.